Atlanta, GA - The country’s longest-running campaign
against construction of a new coal plant ended today as LS Power, a New
Jersey-based power company, announced that it will cancel plans to build the
Longleaf Energy Station in Blakely, GA. Sierra Club, Friends of the
Chattahoochee and GreenLaw have been organizing against the Longleaf coal plant
since it was first proposed in 2001. This victory comes as part of a legal
agreement between LS Power and Sierra Club.

This victory marks the 160th proposed coal plant
canceled since Sierra Club launched its Beyond Coal campaign in 2005. This
victory is particularly noteworthy because the struggle lasted for a decade and
involved numerous hearings and appeals, and sustained local opposition by
hundreds of Georgia residents. Longleaf was one of the very first plants proposed
when, in 2001, the coal industry attempted to block clean energy development by
building more than 150 new coal plants across the US, a move which would have effectively
locked the nation into dependence on coal-fired electricity for the foreseeable
future. Longleaf was one of the last remaining new coal projects proposed
anywhere in the United States, counting 160 proposals that have now been
defeated or abandoned in the past decade.

Several times over the past decade it looked like LS Power would
move forward with its proposed coal plant, but local residents continued their
opposition through multiple tactics, including holding a call-in day this past
June when more than 250 Georgians called LS Power asking the CEO to cancel the
proposal.

“This is not just a
victory for the individuals and organizations fighting this plant, but also for
all Georgians, who are now safe from a major new source of toxic air
pollution,” said Colleen Kiernan, Director of the Georgia Chapter of the Sierra
Club. “This victory represents our best work: combining the power of the
courts, the power of the people and the power of the press.”

Sierra Club
and Friends of the Chattahoochee were represented by GreenLaw, an Atlanta-based
nonprofit law firm, in a series of legal challenges to the permits issued for
the plant. The legal battle over the Longleaf coal plant made national and
international news when Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thelma Wyatt
Cummings Moore issued a ruling that the plant’s air quality permit was illegal
because it failed to provide any limits on emissions of CO2. While
Judge Moore’s decision was later overturned, the United States Environmental
Protection Agency adopted much of the legal reasoning of the decision in
promulgating rules to limit CO2 emissions from larger industrial
facilities.

“Longleaf’s cancelation is one of dozens that have swept the
nation, which raises the question – when will state officials finally learn
that Georgia’s citizens deserve better than coal?” said GreenLaw’s Executive
Director, Justine Thompson. “Georgia has a promising future – but to be a
serious player in the global economy while also ensuring that we have clean air
and water, Georgia needs to embrace energy efficiency
and more renewable sources of energy.”

The announcement comes as part of a nationwide agreement with
Sierra Club that also requires LS Power to abandon its proposed Plum Point 2
coal plant in Arkansas and imposes strict new limits on air pollution from the
new Sandy Creek coal plant in Texas. The agreement requires the company to
withdraw all requests for permits in Georgia and Arkansas, and that any issued
permits be rescinded or revoked.

Local
residents, who would have been most significantly affected by the plant’s
construction, were active in opposing the plant. “When we found out the truth
about what this plant would do to our lives, we had no choice but to oppose it.
We were just regular people who want our grandchildren to breathe clean air,”
said Bobby McLendon, President of Friends of the Chattahoochee. “Helping to
stop this plant is probably the most important thing I have ever done for my family,
my community and the Earth.”

If built,
Plant Longleaf would have contributed 88 pounds of toxic mercury per year, 1938
pounds of lead per year, and more than 8000 tons of soot and smog per year, to
Georgia’s atmosphere and water system. Mercury pollution can cause neurological
disorders and birth defects in babies, and soot and smog contribute to
respiratory illness and trigger asthma attacks.

Sierra Club, GreenLaw, and several other environmental and
public health organizations continue to fight the two remaining coal plant
proposals in Georgia proposed by POWER4Georgians in Central and Southeast
Georgia. These groups’ work to transition Georgia off of imported coal and onto
homegrown clean energy like wind and solar is part of a national effort involving
unprecedented collaboration by more than a hundred organizations nationwide.
Over the past decade this national campaign has stopped
160 proposed coal plants and secured record investments in clean energy. Since
November 2008 only one coal plant has broken ground anywhere in the United
States, a highly-subsidized project in Mississippi.